South African fintech startup Akiba Digital raised $1.1 million during a pre-seeding round to scale up its presence in the market, according to media reports. The funding round was led by Expert Dojo and Oui Capital and saw participation from Basecamp Fund, Soma Capital, Hustle Fund, Future Africa, LoftyInc, a former PayPal executive, and angel investors.
Founded in 2017, Akiba Digital enables lenders to extend capital to small businesses and individuals by providing nuanced credit insights and real-time lending decisions.
Akiba Digital also uses alternative datasets to provide inclusive scores that allow lenders to score people and small businesses which was otherwise impossible to reach by traditional credit bureaus, a problem that is faced by around 80 percent of small businesses and individuals. The pre-seeding funding amount will be used to grow its market shares in Africa and connect over 20,000 SMEs to lenders through its ecosystem.
Tebogo Mokwena, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Akiba Digital told the media, “The fundraise will also help us assess other African markets that we are looking to scale into. Our goal is to be in 10+ African markets in two to three years, enabling millions of small businesses and individuals to access better financing through our alternative scoring. Longer-term we want to scale into South America and ultimately be one of Africa’s unicorns to IPO by 2027.”
The fintech startup is already growing its revenues five times on a month-to-month basis and has also launched an SME platform called Insyts that allows SMEs that need funding to apply for business financing without any hassle and monitor their financial health under one platform.
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